Favorite Things
Favorite Things: Gerald Arpino's Light Rain
- By Nicole Duffy Robertson
(Walter McBride/WM Photos) Dancers: Valerie Robin and Fabrice Calmels
What does it mean when a ballet continues to ignite controversy decades after it was first performed? Unlike Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring, which caused riots at its premiere in 1913, but was revived seventy-five years later to standing ovations, Gerald Arpino’s ballet Light Rain (1981) continues to elicit a clear critical split: audiences tend to love it, critics less so (or more interestingly, feel guilty about liking it).1 Light Rain straddles the divide between high vs. popular art, in no small part because of its unabashed celebration of a...
